BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
63 
Plate XII. 
SPIZELLA SOCIALIS, Bonaparte. 
Chipping Sparrow. 
The Chipping Sparrow, so familiar to everybody, is not only one of 
tlie most abundant, but also one of the most widely diffused of all our 
species. It is found from the Atlantic to the Pacific in its two races, and 
breeds from Georgia to Nova Scotia on our eastern seaboard, and from 
Vera Cruz, Mexico, northward through Arizona, Utah and California. 
Although obtained at different seasons of the year in all portions of North 
America to Mexico, it is a strange and remarkable fact that its breeding- 
grounds are not equally extensive. 
Large numbers of these birds annually winter in the valley of the 
Colorado, and thence doubtless spread themselves over the whole Pacific 
region, as far north as Fort Resolution, on Great Slave Lake. In the 
Last they may be seen in companies of a hundred or more from October 
to April through Northern Georgia and South Carolina, and possibly in 
the Gulf States. 
On the return of mild weather, which generally follows the vernal 
equinox, these flocks forsake in a measure their winter homes, and journey 
northward. Those from Northern Mexico pursue a northwesterly course, 
reaching Arizona about the twenty-fourth of March, where a part remain 
to breed ; but the greater portion pass up the valley of the Colorado, and 
after receiving fresh accessions to their number, continue their migratory 
course until they have reached their destination. On the other hand, our 
Eastern variety tarries longer in the South, and only takes its dejiarture 
when Nature, awakened from her winter sleep in our Northern States, has 
begun to put on her charming robe of green. But unlike its Western 
